George W. Bush's Iraq war architect says he will likely vote for Clinton

LA Times ^ | Aug. 26, 2016 | Seema Mehta

[Rockingham]

The GOP became a hollow and discredited shell after the presidency of George W. Bush. His manner was relaxed to the point of suggesting slackness, even laziness. His domestic and economic policies were often feckless, and his prosecution of the War on Terror and its episodes in Afghanistan and Iraq, the GOP failed to generate clear success or an enduring national consensus.

Just as Obama was the country's rejection of the Bush Presidency, Trump is the GOP's rejection of it as well. Trump is everything that George W. Bush was not. Trump is flamboyant, combative, and detail oriented where Bush was prone to avoid defending himself or his policies beyond broad generalities. And, unlike Bush, Trump earned his success without the benefit of family name and influence.

[Jacob Kell]

IMO, NeoCons are basically Liberal Interventionists who are somewhat pro-Capitalism/Free Enterprise, though real Conservatives are quite better in that regard.

[GOPJ]

Every quisling gets their own story in the MSM...

[moodyskeptic]

Good observation. I’ll say this about Trump... he has flushed out the Rinos and quislings, they scurry on the floor like roaches when the light clicks on.

[Rockingham]

They are by nature Michael Oakeshott kind of conservatives — smart, knowledgeable, fact driven, and recoiling from the Left because it is so often wrong. Yet they retain the common susceptibility of highly educated people to sweeping ideas and a belief in the wisdom of experts. What they lack is a Burkean sense of prudence as a virtue and that the best course for a statesman is usually to leave things alone and let events take their course.

[al baby]

Gorleckis fire wall and Bill Clinton are directly responsible for 911 he had obl served to him on a silver platter he said no

[al baby]

He went in to avenge his fathers failure in the first go.f war and for the threats Iraq made on his dad sadly we should have leveled Saudi Arabia first

[vette6387]

“..sadly we should have leveled Saudi Arabia first..”

Yes, now that would have made some sense, but because the Booshes are in “the ollll bidnus,” they let the Bin Laden Family escape this from this country as a first order of business after 911.

[Sgt_Schultze]

This is good for Trump. His team should make a commercial showing all the people whose bad judgement voters hate, now using that same judgement to support hillary. Hillary supported wolfowitz’s war, now wolfowitz is returning the favor.

[Alberta's Child]

Only a damn fool would look at different situations 60 years apart -- and in different parts of the world -- and expect them to unfold in a similar manner.

At the very least, the two WW2 cases started with a multi-year military campaign where the enemy's cities were bombed to rubble before a single U.S. soldier occupied those nations. That approach seems to be conspicuously absent from all of the nation-building crap we've seen since then.

Another thing that is conspicuously missing is a formal declaration of war against an enemy nation, too.

Let me fill you in on a little secret: When the president of the United States stands up and declares that the nation is engaged something as silly and banal as a "war on terror," you know damn well that the @sshole doesn't intend to actually win anything.

[ek_hornbeck]

Most of the Bush/Rove wing of the GOP and nearly all of the neoconservatives will vote for Clinton. The only difference between them and Wolfowitz is that he admits to it. The rest won’t admit to it because doing so is an admission that the GOP establishment and the Democrats are uniparty.

[Jacob Kell]

Also, Germany was a European or Western country that was already somewhat familiar with democracy-the ill-fated Wiemar Republic. While Japan we spared the Emperor who got on board with us. With regard to Iraq, after taking out Saddam’s regime, we should have just put in the local version of Mubarak and not have been quick to disband the original Iraqi Army.